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The phenomenal Brooklyn band Guerilla Toss graced the hometown crowd with a monthlong residency at local haunt Union Pool that found the band trying out new songs and compelling covers, and generally driving the locals wild. This band’s bread and butter has always been the live setting, but these shows put the band at a new level. Against the backdrop of sick visuals from Macrodose, Kassie Carlson whipped the room into a frenzy, culminating in a room wide mosh pit during set-closing “Polly’s Crystal.” Whipping from one song straight into the next for almost the entire hour, the band served up sixteen songs that included an ESG cover and the new numbers “Come Up With Me” and “Green Apple.” In case you were worried, I think we can expect their next release to meet or exceed the outstanding GT Ultra.

This recording combines engineer Doug’s awesome house mix plus my Schoeps MK5 mics from the center of the balcony. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!

Ryley Walker arrived on The Bowery Ballroom stage as the opening act. For many bands, the opening 45 minutes means an opportunity to deliver a tight-but-denuded set that gives the untutored fan a reason to seek more. Well, Ryley and this night’s crack band — longtime compatriot Ryan Jewell, fellow guitarist Bill MacKay, and Calexico (the headliner) bassist Scott Colberg — did the latter but not the former. Which is to say, their version of a “short” set consisted of four songs, but one of them was 18 minutes long. And instead of “the hits,” as it were, those four were, save one, all tracks from his forthcoming album, Deafman Glance, which promises to extend Walker’s renown as a musician’s musician, who follows his instincts where they take him and isn’t afraid to challenge the listener.

If for years the understanding among Walker and his fans is that there’s about as little relationship between the reasonably straightforward sound of his records and his expansive, jazz-influenced live shows as there is between the seriousness of Walker’s music and the lightheartedness of his stage banter, the Deafman Glance material seems poised to narrow that gap. The proggy, dense, album sound carries over well into Walker’s chosen live milieu, making (for example) the “Telluride Speed” that closed this set a thrill but, unlike the eighteen-minute “Halfwit In Me” that opened it, not a totally radical departure from the album version.

Ryley’s stated goal was for Deafman Glance to be his anti-folk record, and indeed, this felt like the least folk-driven Ryley Walker show I’ve seen. With his vocals turned relatively low in the mix, and a song selection that was relatively short on opportunities for vocal pyrotechnics, Walker seemed intent on letting his electric guitar guide his sound (listen to that “Halfwit in Me” – it did). Walker’s full-band shows have always de-prioritized vocals to some degree in favor of extended jamming, but if I hadn’t seen Walker before and someone told me this was a guy who also does a mean cover of Van Morrison, I’m not sure I’d have believed them. That’s one of the joys of seeing this artist — by the time I see him again (expect a headlining tour in the U.S. in the fall), he’ll almost surely have evolved yet again.

I recorded this set with a beautiful stereo soundboard feed and Schoeps MK5 cardiod microphones. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

What’s better than an early Sunday evening kickin’ it with the deep space musings of Matt “MV” Valentine? How about Matt plus PG Six, aka Pat Gubler, who’ve been touring (and are about to put out a record) together as Wet Tuna? The pair of guitarists (plus some pre-recorded beats) were in NYC for a pair of shows, the first night (recorded) at Brooklyn’s Ceremony, the second this jaunt at the revitalized Trans-Pecos.

Given that the night kicked off with a DJ set from WFMU’s DJ Jeff Conklin, whose beloved Avant Ghetto show is a must-listen for fans of this kind of music, it felt appropriate for the Tuna to launch with “I Know You Rider,” the traditional blues song popularized by the Grateful Dead. From there, we got two more sick covers – Michael Hurley’s “Water Train” followed by Incredible String Band’s “Empty Pocket Blues,” which flowed into the Livin’ the Die track “New York Street.” Along with this performance with the Tuna, we’ve also caught Matt on some recent solo outings — so stay tuned for that as well.

This set was recorded directly from the Trans-Pecos soundboard. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

If Williamsburg venue Union Pool is better-known among the GenZ semi-grownups that populate the nabe’s bars these days, don’t tell the people who crowded the room for the Bardo Pond show on this snowy Saturday night — many of us grinning as the hookup-seeking set turned away from door not only by the “SOLD OUT” sign but also the deep noise emanating from behind it.

Bardo Pond is one of those bands that will always cast a deep but not wide net, nestling in the psyche of those able and open to embracing them. Their massive oeuvre — their latest and misleadingly titled Volume 8 is far from only their 8th record — attests to fans’ insatiable desire for what they’re into. Tonight’s set, short on number of songs but long on jams, was anchored by a sprawler from the new album, “And I Will” along with some recent tour favorites. The night capped with a longtime band classic, “Tommy Gun Angel,” putting an exclamation point on the idea that whatever other fleeting things might pass on that Saturday night in that room, this band always leaves echoes long after they’ve left the building.

I recorded this set with Lesley’s house PA feed together with Schoeps MK5 cardiod microphones. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!

Stream and download the complete show (and donate to the band) from our bandcamp page:

Desertion Trio joined us at newly-licensed Trans-Pecos this past Friday to celebrate the release of their new album, Midtown Tilt, having done the same in their hometown of Philadelphia the night before.The album picks up in many ways where their excellent 2016 effort, Desertion, left off, oscillating between focused riffage and freeform jazz improv. This set showed off not only bandleader Nick Millevoi’s ample guitar skills, but gave broad berth to guest keyboardist Jamie Saft, who appears on both of the band’s albums, adding tremendous depth in the process. Of course, the focus of this one-hour sessions was on Midtown Tilt, including an outstanding rendition of “Jai Alai Noon” that gave Saft ample room to run., while set closer “Numbers Maker” coalesced into an extended freakout before tapering off into its final minutes. For those of us who’d seen the band before, there was much to love about this version of “Desertion and Arsonist’s Match,” which departed from earlier, Saft-less renditions we’vefeatured but kept the song’s essential nature as a palette for extended interaction. As we’ve pointed out before, all of these fine musicians contribute to the music world in so many ways, so it is a special pleasure to see them come together here in New York. Check out Midtown Tilt, which is available directly from the band now.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK22 microphones at the stage lip, together with a soundboard feed. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Hiss Golden Messenger’s second night at The Bowery Ballroom not only picked up where the first two-hour show left off, but gathered steam. If the first night–in front of a slew of friends and local musicians–felt like a more intimate, freewheeling affair, this show situated the current version of the band as the confident rock n’ roll outfit they are, playing about fifty percent different material from the first show, improving on several of the repeats, and delivering crowd-pleasing covers that are red meat to a weekend crowd. After opening with the contemplative “When the Wall Comes Down” from Hallelujah Anyhow, the tempo picked up and stayed hot through the first hour. I was moved by this version of “Blue Country Mystic,” which hewed closer in tempo and style to the Poor Moon original than some of the recent versions I’ve seen, and likewise, the “Red Rose Nantahala” we saw both tonight and the night before felt closer to the version from Haw than some of the recent versions we’ve heard. The new songs haven’t given the band as many chances at new arrangements, but it’s safe to say that “Like A Mirror Loves A Hammer,” shows great potential as a mid-set jam song.

After a heartfelt mid-set version of “Caledonia, My Love” — introduced by Phil Cook as his favorite HGM song — it was back to the rock, with the band letting loose with a fine cover of “I Won’t Back Down” followed by “Lost Out In the Darkness” and the party jam “I’m A Raven (Shake Children).” This is a band that knows their crowd, and the upbeat rockers matched the mood in the room, as the weekend warriors and the repeat customers from last night both had come ready to celebrate the weekend and the band’s success. Instead of last night’s heartfelt retelling of the band’s origin story, we got some hilarious riffs about the band’s long night out last night, including an encounter with some pretzel chips. But if they were physically running on fumes, HGM didn’t show it. If anything, I found most versions of what they played even sharper and more emphatic than the previous show. In lieu of an encore break, the band accepted some pretzel chips from a fan and passed them around the crowd, ending the night with Pops Staples’ “Friendship” followed by “Drum.” This wasn’t quite the end of HGM year — they headed to Philly the following night, and D.C. after that — but it felt valedictory nonetheless, an exclamation point on a year well spent.

I recorded this set in the same manner as the previous night, with a soundboard feed from the band’s engineer Tim and Schoeps MK22 microphones. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Children are essential to the origin story of Hiss Golden Messenger, and they’ve been a recurring theme in Mike “M.C.” Taylor’s songs since the beginning. Taylor introduced “Drum” on this night by telling the story in full, of a loser (his words) washed up from music, left out of life, sitting in a cabin next to a newborn, wondering about the future. Contemplating his life as he sat next to his newborn son Elijah, Taylor started to make music again. For him that child wasn’t just a literal birth; it was his personal rebirth, too. It was there that he wrote my favorite of all his songs, “Call Him Daylight,” which tackles the ambiguity of forces greater than us (some would view that as “God,” though I don’t think you have to). To that entity he says at one point, “Some call you destroyer, some Daylight.” It’s a fundamental paradox of many world religions — you’re asked to revere god as your creator, but also your ultimate destroyer. Which kept me thinking about children, and this band’s particular choices in 2017.

The righteous anger of musicians (not to mention the rest of us) toward the current regime is hardly news at this point, and it’s been reflected in many, many albums this year. If you follow the man on Twitter, you might expect the same from Taylor. But the latest Hiss Golden Messenger album does perhaps the braver thing, certainly the rarer thing. It’s announced by the title, Hallelujah Anyhow. A child who wakes up alive for the first time tomorrow here in America won’t know the name of anyone in the current administration, won’t harbor rage toward the rich or the indecent or the greedy, won’t know about hate, won’t worry about global warming, won’t fear misogyny or racism, won’t know war. In a child’s eyes the world is all beauty. In a child’s eyes this world is all they’ve known.

Taylor and a stacked band of Triangle locals (Phil Cook, Skylar Gudasz, Darren Jesse, Ryan Gustafson, Mike Lewis, James Wallace, Michael Libramento) brought that ethos to the Bowery Ballroom for this first of two nights, giving us two hours of inclusive, upbeat Hallelujah songs as well as a well-chosen selection of favorites. The past two years have seen this band release not less than three complete albums — the band hit another high point with 2016’s Heart Like A Levee and companion album Vestapol — which has stacked the catalog with new material. If you missed the outstanding Music Hall of Williamsburg show the band did in 2016 (which I unfortunately did) this could well have been your first time hearing many of these songs live. It’s striking how cohesive the Merge-era, bigger-room-oriented material is with itself, but there’s also that constant thread that reaches all the way back to Bad Debt. Compare the two songs that Taylor played as a duo with Cook — “Drum” (a very old one) and “Caledonia, My Love” (a new one) — and it’s clear that Taylor’s heart remains where it has been, in a purgatory between light and darkness. Each of those songs may have been an outlier on their respective albums, but side by side, they make sense.

Still, this was a positive night, a two-hour “evening with,” and there was plenty of party music to celebrate with, including the band’s semi-regular cover of Sam Cooke’s “Having A Party” and the main set closers “Domino” followed by the already-classic “Southern Grammar.” Having seen these songs performed many times now, by a variety of personnel, I’ve come to appreciate the variations in Taylor’s performances of his work. Songs, too, are a kind of offspring, an evolving gift to a wider world, and Taylor has continued to help these songs grow into new and different entities than what they were. Taylor’s restless tinkering with this music seems almost calculated to keep you in that state, able to see his music as brand-new even if you’ve seen him a dozen or more times before. If you’re lucky you’ll listen long enough that you find yourself, however briefly, like that open-hearted child again, able to say that simple word, hallelujah. You stand there inside the Bowery Ballroom, and it’s the holiday season, it’s New York City, and you’re alive. So hallelujah, anyhow.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK22 open cardiod microphones mounted at the soundboard, with a feed of the PA mix from the band’s dapper sound engineer Tim. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Wilco is the kind of popular band that is perfectly suited to a festival like Big Ears. For the past several years, the Knoxville, TN-based festival has put on the kind of genre-agnostic, fan-focused, music-focused event that is an increasing rarity in a festival environment where the top-line band is invariably a mainstream hip-hop act or LCD Soundsystem. Wilco have been called “dad-rock” and a variety of other things like it, but there’s nothing embarrassing about liking a band that has continued to focus on songwriting and continued trying to do something new. If you don’t believe that, you obviously didn’t see, or hear about, Jeff Tweedy’s experimental set during this festival with Chikamorachi (we hope to share that soon).

On this night, Wilco took the stage at the Tennessee Theatre and played a set true to the festival’s style, cranking out several extended noise-jam numbers including “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” and caterwauling “Impossible Germany.” If this didn’t offer quite the novelty of the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot set at Solid Sound later in the year, this set was nonetheless a special one, including starting with the fairly-rarely-played “Radio Cure.” The set doesn’t so much flow as exist as a series of climaxes and valleys, though the noise outro from “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” into a furious “Art of Almost” is a particular pleasure. Schmilco and its several obligatory appearances gave several points in the set a more sedate feel, as none of these songs seem to have yet established themselves as live breakouts, though “Locator” feels like the most obvious candidate to get there (and is easily the best of the Schmilco songs played at this show). Wilco ended the night with a lesser-played number of 2017, “A Shot In the Arm,” whose coda could as easily have been a message to the music festival world at large: “What you once were isn’t what you want to be any more.” Indeed, if you’re in the business of attending or putting on music festivals, I’d recommend a look at Big Ears.

This set was recorded by Matt Honkonen of the Big Ears staff with a Zoom H6 and was provided to us by Big Ears. The sound quality is a bit compressed at points, but the fairly ideal location of the recorder in the theater yields an overall pleasing result. Enjoy!

Not long after we caught Robyn Hitchcock on twonights with Yo La Tengo as his backing band, Robyn made his way up to what is likely America’s most musically adventurous music festival, Big Ears, which has enthralled listeners down in Knoxville, Tennessee for the past few years. The independent festival has continued to grow in stature while retaining a unique musical character; there’s room in its lineups for rock, experimental noise, classical, folk, and more, but you’ll find an admirable absence of the Top 40-type bands that are now the main draws of almost every major U.S. festival. Robyn’s sets at this year’s festival were divided into an early and late show, and each has its pleasures. Both sets opened with Dylan covers (“Chimes of Freedom” and “Not Dark Yet”). The early set continued in the covers vein, with Robyn lighting up songs by the Beatles (“Dear Prudence”) and Syd Barrett (“Terrapin”) and closing with the Soft Boys’ “I Wanna Destroy You,” that last one being a particularly interesting feat for a solo singer/guitarist. As you might expect, the late show took on a more freewheeling character, with Robyn giving songs like “I Often Dream of Trains” and “Adventure Rocket Ship” extended and hilarious introductions.

As longtime Robyn fans, we’re thrilled that the Big Ears team provided us with access to these recordings. We look forward to partnering with the Big Ears crew in 2018.

The next Big Ears Festival begins on March 22, 2018. Watch for the lineup to be announced next week!

The Chicago band Clearance have been at it for a few years now, having first gained broader notice with a track debut from their current full-length, Rapid Rewards, on Stereogum. Various corners of the Internet have compared them to Pavement, having more (to this listener) to do with their wry sense of humor than their exact musical style, which falls into the broad camp of “indie rock” or “alt-rock” or “garage-rock” or whatever you want to call guitar-driven music that isn’t made by meatheads these days, but is delivered, at this stage, with a certain professionalism that wasn’t Pavement’s stock-in-trade until career end.

This set at Rough Trade NYC represents a solid eleven (with one additional that was aborted) song introduction to the band, including “You’ve Been Pre-Approved.” But among the set, I was most taken with the band’s latest single, “Are You Aware,” an upbeat burst of optimism that might fit less within the “ironic slacker” framework, but is just the dash of musical Prozac you want on a Friday after a wearying week. By the time the song downshifts in its final segment, you’re feeling the relaxation wash over you. We also got some new songs in the mix, including “Chances Are” and “Haven’t You Got the Time,” the latter of which has a bit more of a 90s Britpop feel than some of the band’s other songs. The band closed with the short-burst anthem “She’s A Peach,” which ended abruptly in under two minutes. At first it seemed like a mistake or a joke, but then it became clear — the song had said all it needed to say. Clearance are that kind of band.

I recorded this set in the same manner as the Widowspeak set, with Schoeps MK5 microphones and a soundboard feed from Jeremy. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

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